Our internal lights came on; I felt vibration through the stanchion I held as the great pumps begin to tremble again. Stampfer moved amidships, toward his broadside guns. The Long Tom's bore was a cylinder of hellish white, breech to muzzle.
"Holy Jesus preserve us," Salomon said. I looked around. The digital information on his screen meant nothing to me, but I could understand the third track rising from the planetary surface on Piet's display.
Guillermo split his optical screen, setting the Keys' image to the right. On the left half was the Hercules, rising to higher orbit to join the battle.
The freighter's hatch was open. The 5-cm plasma cannon we'd left the Southerns was mounted on a swivel in the center of the hatchway. Our optics and the software enhancing them were so good that I could make out at least a dozen armored figures within the freighter's hold.
The Southern refugees didn't have hard suits. The Hercules was crewed by survivors from the Keys' landing party, and perhaps by prisoners released from 17 Abraxis as well.
The two Federation ships were the jaws of a nutcracker, and the Oriflamme was their nut. One hit, even by the swivel gun, on our thrusters and we would no longer be able to maneuver with the Keys to the Kingdom. One hit. .
"Piet," Stephen said, "bring us in tight to the Keys. I'll take a party aboard and we'll clear her."
"Prothero's holding his fire," Piet replied. I didn't know whether Guillermo had included me in the command channel, or if the whole crew was hearing the debate. "He'll salvo into our hold if we come within boarding distance. That's what he wants!"
I couldn't command, I couldn't even talk. I trembled in my hard suit. There was a red haze over my vision and I wanted to kill someone, I wanted to kill more than I'd ever before in my life wanted anything. .
"Jesus Christ will you bring us close?" Stephen shouted. "Will you have those whoresons peck us to death and no answer? Bring us close, damn you, bring us close!"
It wasn't anger in his tone. It was white fluorescent rage, and I knew because the same need surged through me, ruling me, would I never swing my arm and see faces dissolve in blood again?
"We-" Piet shouted.
The Hercules was on an intersecting but not parallel path to the paired orbits of the Keys and the Oriflamme. Cinpeda had told us-and would tell anybody at gunpoint-that the reticle of the Hercules' laser communicator wasn't aligned properly. The Federation crew had to make a close approach to the Keys in order to coordinate their attack on us.
I knew that. Until the Keys to the Kingdom fired all her loaded guns into the Hercules, it didn't occur to me that Commodore Prothero knew nothing of the sort.
The freighter burst into a ball of opalescent vapor. Her own thrusters ruptured, adding their ionized fury to the directed jolts of the Federation cannon. The Hercules' light-alloy hull couldn't contain or even slow the cataclysm.
"All personnel except those with immediate gunnery or engineering tasks, assemble in the holds," Piet ordered in a voice as thin as a child's. "Starboard watch to the forward hold, port watch aft. Over."
I followed Stephen toward the compartment bulkhead. Because we hadn't yet loaded the 17 Abraxis' cutter to replace the one we'd lost on Riel, there was room in both holds for boarding parties.
I noticed that the Long Tom's crew was headed aft with us. They'd apparently interpreted "immediate tasks" to mean tasks more immediate than the six to eight minutes the 17-cm gun would take to cool for the next shot.
The midships compartment looked like the remains of a lobster dinner. Fragments of flesh and ceramic armor floated in the air. Much of the blood had spread across the bulkheads in viscous blotches. Sufficient droplets, wobbling as they tried to remain spherical, still floated in the compartment to paint the suits of us coming from the bow.
The bolt had entered through Number Two gunport at a severe angle, taking an oval bite from the coaming. The main charge had struck Number Three gun, vaporizing the left side of the carriage, much of the gun tube behind the second reinforce, and parts of-
Three men, maybe five. It was hard to say. There were so many body parts drifting in the compartment, rebounding from the bulkheads in slow curves, that my first reaction was that everyone amidships was dead.
Rakoscy was working on an armless man in a transparent cocoon meant as emergency shelter if the ship lost its atmosphere. The bubble was a tight fit for two men wearing most of their hard suits. Another crewman, anonymous in his armor, stood over the cocoon to illuminate Rakoscy's work with a handlight. There wasn't room for an aide within the distended fabric.
It didn't look to me as if the victim had a prayer. I don't suppose Rakoscy could afford to let himself think that way, though.
The forward hold was crowded. Stephen pushed to the front. A Fed bolt had struck near the cross-bulkhead. It hadn't penetrated, but the upper aft corner of the hatch was fractured in a conchoidal pattern. I wondered if Winger would be able to bring the APU back on line. .
Dole, his helmet marked with three fluorescent bars, stood beside the hatch controls. Lightbody and Maher were at the arms locker beside the bosun. They gave us room as they recognized Stephen, Stephen and me.
"I'll take the line, Mister Dole," Stephen announced, reaching for the magnetic grapnel in the bosun's left hand. "Gentlemen to the front."
"Yessir," Dole said, giving up the grapnel. "If you'd really rather."
Lightbody hooked the line onto one of Stephen's equipment studs. The grapnel had permanent magnets on its gripping surface, but unless something went wrong, its electromagnets would be powered through the line itself.
There was also an adhesive pad to grip nonferrous surfaces. From the way the Keys to the Kingdom had resisted our plasma bolts, there was no doubt that her hull was steel, and thick steel besides.
"I'm next," I said to Lightbody. There was movement in the hold, men entering and shifting position. My eyes were focused on the back of Stephen's helmet, and I wasn't seeing even that.
"Sir, will you take a rifle?" a voice said.
The intercom worked with only the usual amount of static. Neither we nor the Feds were burning thrusters. Occasionally an attitude jet fired. For the most part, being weightless in a windowless hold had the feeling of being motionless.
Someone jogged my left hand. Maher was looking at me, offering a falling-block rifle. The side lever was deliberately oversized so that it was easier for a man wearing gauntlets to work.
"What?" I said. I shook my head. I wasn't sure he could see me behind the reflection from my faceplate. "No. no. I have to get closer to do any good."
I blinked, trying to remember things. "You can give me another bar," I said. "Hang it on my suit opposite the line."
I felt clicks against my hard suit. The suit wasn't trapping me this time. My mind was in a much straiter prison than that of my ceramic armor.
"Prepare to board," a voice ordered. Salomon or Guillermo, I couldn't tell which; not Piet.
Dole turned the control wheel and stepped out of my range of sight as he moved to take his own place on the boarding line. Six of our attitude jets fired together in a ten-second pulse, braking the Oriflamme's momentum with perfect delicacy.